Officers

The five officers - John Hardy, Carle Goeman, Kenneth Bur, Frederick A. LaBarge and Douglas A. Wilt - are named as defendants in the civil rights case filed in 1997 by Mark Canter and Terry Moore.

The suit also names Otsego County and a private investigation firm from Petoskey as defendants, claiming Canter and Moore were the victims of malicious prosecution when they were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Their convictions were overturned in 1996 after each had served about eight years in prison.

The federal lawsuit alleges their due process rights were violated by a police and prosecution conspiracy that manufactured and withheld evidence, and coaxed the principal witness - Brienna Herrick, also known as Debra Parmentier - who testified in their criminal trials that she witnessed the murder. Herrick recanted her testimony during a lengthy unsworn interview with defense attorneys in 1995 in which she indicated the prosecutor and state police pressured her to testify the way she did. Herrick, who also faces perjury and other charges stemming from her testimony, disappeared shortly after the interview and has not been seen since. She is the subject of a nationwide search by the Michigan State Police and the FBI.

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The state attorney general appealed in October 1999 a ruling by U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen in Detroit that denied claims by the state police officers that they had limited immunity and could not be sued.

However, a unanimous ruling by the three-judge appeals panel rejected the state's claim of limited immunity and has ordered the officers to trial in the federal district court case.

"Essentially we won," said Dan Hubbell, attorney for Moore. Hubbel said the case could still take several more years before going to trial in Detroit. "I anticipate this won't be the last appeal. The name of the game for defendants is delay."

Chris DeWitt, a spokesman for Michigan Attorney General, said he doesn't believe the state will appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. "I think it will head to trial at this point and I'm not aware of any further plans to appeal, so we'll see what happens," DeWitt said.

In their opinion, the appeals judges wrote the state's arguments for limited immunity "represent thinly-veiled attempts to challenge the correctness of the district court's conclusion regarding the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the plaintiffs' civil rights claims…Specifically the district court found that plaintiffs had established triable issues of fact as to whether the defendants knew before trial that Parmentier lacked credibility; whether the defendants suppressed potentially exculpatory evidence regarding Parmentier's lack of credibility; whether the defendants improperly coached Parmentier's testimony; and whether defendants improperly provided Parmentier with food, lodging, and spending money during trial."

The 10-page opinion concluded: "For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court's decision and REMAND the case for trial."

The opinion also noted: "That at the request of Canter's counsel, the Michigan Attorney General commenced an investigation into Canter's conviction in December 1989. This investigation revealed extensive irregularities in the prosecution's handling of both Canter's and Moore's cases. In light of the attorney general's findings, both men sought new trials and their cases subsequently were remanded to the state trial court for evidentiary hearings…Following remand, the Otsego County prosecutor's office disclosed thousands of pages of documents relating to the investigation of Jerry Tobias's murder. Many of these documents contained exculpatory information relating to plaintiffs, despite the prosecutor's previous testimony that all such information had been disclosed. In addition, one of he prosecution's key witnesses, Debra Parmentier, was charged in 1994 with eight counts of perjury for false statements she allegedly made during plaintiffs' murder trials. In February 1995, Parmentier gave a lengthy unsworn statement to plaintiffs' counsel indicating that her testimony implicating plaintiffs had been false."